Really, what’s happening is this has become a very complicated interaction between the end user and the journey they are trying to take, and the marketer and the journey they want you to take.
Jeff Walpole is the Co-founder and CEO of Phase2 Technology, a digital experience agency built on open technology servicing industries such as healthcare, financial services, consumer brands, nonprofits, and government. Organizations like Red Hat, Memorial Sloan Kettering, and the United Nations rely on Phase2’s technical expertise to develop robust solutions and collaboration systems.
In this episode of Velocitize Talks, Walpole shares his thoughts on privacy, personalization, and the customer experience.
Interacting with the Customer (1:16)
The customer journey has been evolving quite a bit in the digital experience. You have this explosion of ways that the end user interacts with the digital application—everything from voice, text, chat, Internet of Things—really expanding beyond web and mobile. They expect to interact with a digital brand and property in all of these different venues, whatever is convenient for them.
It’s essential for companies today to expand upon their ability to provide a holistic digital experience. (Phase2 has some tips for measuring your customer experience success on their blog.) According to MIT Technology Review Insights, “AI is rapidly transforming the way that companies interact with their customers.” One of their recent surveys showed that by 2022, 59% of sales and marketing departments will use AI to get closer to their customers and deepen their understanding.
Person of interest (2:28)
Personalization is often thought about as a technology problem. The problem isn’t the lack of technology, the problem is they don’t understand exactly what the goals are, they don’t have the right content to support it, and they usually don’t understand the end user well enough to guide them to that place that is truly personalized.
Earlier this year, HubSpot highlighted brands that have done well when it comes to personalization. Shutterfly, after gaining permission to access your photos, will take your pictures and place them on items you can purchase. That’s cool, but why should you care? In Retail Dive’s recent study, it showed that 93% of companies see a boost in revenue when they have a personalization strategy. And according to Gartner, companies can expect a 16% increase in outcomes when that personalization is directed at helping a customer.
Platform of choice (6:51)
Bigger enterprise organizations…need to be thinking beyond websites. They need to be thinking about the complete digital experience whether it’s on voice or text or wherever their end customers want to have it. It’s more than just a content management system and a website, you’ve got commerce, CRM, and MarTech. There’s this huge stack of technology that’s required to make a very good digital experience in this day and age.
With literally thousands of tools to choose from, it’s hard to know what works for you and your team. This Phase2 webinar teaches you how to reach all of your audiences and align your tech.
Keeping your head (8:27)
Headless is probably one of the most important trends right now…It’s actually kind of a game changer in that you’re able to independently swap out pieces of the stack in that architecture without necessarily redoing the whole thing.
As consumers demand more from brands, the need to deliver different experiences to different devices has increased. Headless architecture gives you the flexibility you need to deliver what your customers want. Google Trends shows the rising interest in headless CMS in the past five years.
To learn more about Phase2, visit their website. Follow them on Facebook, LinkedIn & Twitter at @phase2.
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